After 25 Years Of Playing D&D, I Finally Understand How Its Magic Works

Summary

• Jack Vance’s Dying Earth novels heavily influenced D&D spellcasting and magic items, shaping the game’s unique approach to wizards.
• D&D’s early adventures were more about greed and personal gain than heroism, mirroring the amoral tone of Vance’s Cugel stories.
• The Dying Earth series offers a deeper understanding of D&D’s origins and the game’s departure from traditional fantasy narratives.

I’ve played Dungeons & Dragons since the 2e Advanced DnD era, and the game’s depiction of wizards never truly made sense to me until I read Jack Vance’s Dying Earth books. For years, I’ve been aware of the RPG’s connections to Jack Vance, and that “Vancian spellcasting” is the common nomenclature for DnD’s “fire and forget” system of spell slots. I was more surprised that Dying Earth clarified magic, as a whole, in DnD, and what sets it apart from most fantasy fiction. The later books in the series even made the amoral vibe of earlier edition adventures more digestible.

Most of the
Dying Earth
novels are collected short stories taking place within a shared setting. The four main books are
The Dying Earth
(also called
Mazirian The Magician
),
The Eyes Of The Overworld
,
Cugel’s Saga
, and
Rhialto The Marvellous
.

Recent DnD 2024 revision wizard subclass controversies remind me that the many schools of magic in DnD present arcane magic as an advanced scholarly pursuit, and wizards as a cross between magicians and mad scientists. This is exactly the depiction of powerful wizards in Vance’s first Dying Earth novel. In the stories contained in Mazirian The Magician, Vance introduces a strange world whose sun could die at any moment, full of wonders of lost empires and a handful of living mages who still hold mastery over the arcane. Omitting the nihilism of the setting, this describes most DnD campaign worlds.

D&D’s Magic Owes Much To Jack Vance

From Specific Spells To Iconic Magic Items, The Dying Earth Inspired D&D

More recent editions of DnD have introduced useful cantrip spells, but this term was also used in Dying Earth novels. Specific iconic spells came from the novels, often with minimal changes, as Vance’s spell “The Excellent Prismatic Spray” became simply p rismatic spray. Spells that always felt at odds with conventional ideas of Wizards, like clone and simulacrum, feel right at home with Vance’s wizards, who all seem obsessed with growing new life in vats. DnD concepts that place wizardry at an intersection of philosophy, mathematics, and occultism are torn right out of discussions between Vance’s characters, like Turjan and Pandelume.

Spells like
hypnotic pattern
and
resilient sphere
are also clearly inspired by
Dying Earth
novels, and an entire classification of
DnD
magic items, Ioun Stones, is pulled directly from the fourth book in the series,
Rhialto The Marvellous
.

Considering the various magic items in DnD’s new Vecna adventure reminds me that Vance also introduced the conventions of how magic items work in Dungeons & Dragons, and that Vecna himself is an homage to Vance, an anagram of the author’s name. In the wizard duel between Turjan and Kandive the Golden, magic items that repel harmful spells feel like the obvious inspiration for DnD standbys like the Mantle of Spell Resistance. Vance’s chess-like battles between powerful opposing wizards recalls DnD spells like counterspell and contingency, enforcing the idea that a wizard can be prepared for anything, with sufficient resources.

If the plunderers happened to put down an evil demi-lich, they might unintentionally do some good, but this sort of heroism seemed coincidental, rather than by design.

The 5e DnD Dragonlance adventure is different from other current edition modules, with its focused narrative and challenging battles, but the original Dragonlance series also stood apart from other DnD modules of its time. People associate DnD with long-form epic campaigns, like Lord of the Rings, today, but early DnD assumed more episodic, self-contained adventures, often with less heroic stakes. These often operated closer to heists, where if the player characters did some good or defeated a great evil, it was incidental to their pursuit of wealth and personal power. The second two Dying Earth novels showcase this tone perfectly.

Early D&D’s Amoral Tone Is Vancian

Old D&D Adventures Feel More Like Cugel Stories Than Tolkien’s Novels

Some players enjoy being the one evil character in the DnD party, letting them feel like an edgy loner in a room full of traditional heroes, but in the second two Dying Earth novels that follow Cugel the Clever, all the characters are various shades of evil, all out to cruelly outdo each other. Cugel is written as a rogue with strong social skills who dabbles in swordplay and magic, which might make him seem closer to a modern bard archetype. He is entirely motivated by base drives like greed, lust, and revenge, without any character arc or redeeming qualities.

Somehow, Cugel is exactly what players were expected to bring to the table with early DnD, not a party of well-meaning heroes like the Fellowship of the Ring. Classic modules like Tomb of Horrors do not lure altruists to the dungeon based on legends that Acererak is prophesied to awaken and wreak havoc on the living. Adventurers were expected to enter dungeons based solely on greed, chasing rumors of treasure and magic items. If the plunderers happened to put down an evil demi-lich, they might unintentionally do some good, but this sort of heroism seemed coincidental, rather than by design.

Appendix N from the original
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide
provided a list of authors who inspired
DnD
as reading suggestions. Tolkien is among them, but Vance is called out by name specifically.

There are DnD schemes beyond murder hobo behavior, ranging from heists to cons to blackmail, and based on Vance’s Cugel stories, these are just as valid as searching for an ancient relic. Older editions of DnD actually provided experience points based on gold pieces looted from dangerous dungeons, reinforcing the theme of greed as the game’s main motivator. Modern DnD either awards experience points based on overcoming challenges, or levels gained at story-based milestones. This lets the game reflect more than a relentless search for wealth and plunder, but it is a notable evolution from Dungeons & Dragons’ Vance-inspired origins.

D&D Has A Distinct Approach To Magic, Thanks To Vance

The Dying Earth Is A Bigger D&D Influence Than Lord Of The Rings

Just as the Cosmere tabletop RPG based on Mistborn adapts Brandon Sanderson’s work to the medium, there is an official, dedicated Dying Earth TTRPG from Pelgrane Press that fully embraces the eccentricities of Vance’s world. The author’s influence on DnD cannot be understated, and it is likely that far more people are aware of Vancian spellcasting through DnD than through the author’s published books. Some of the Dying Earth novels are difficult to stomach for a modern audience, in part due to an endless reliance on ostentatious language choices, blatant misogyny, and Cugel in general, but they are nonetheless fascinating.

Pelgrane Press, the company that publishes the
Dying Earth
tabletop RPG, is named after a fictional monster from Vance’s books. The Pelgrane is a vicious birdlike humanoid that preys on human flesh.

Appendix N from the original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Dungeon Master’s Guide provided a list of authors who inspired DnD as reading suggestions. Tolkien is among them, but Vance is called out by name specifically. Superficially, DnD has the Tolkien aesthetic, but dig a little deeper, and DnD’s heart is closer to Jack Vance. Michael Moorcock gave DnD alignments and the planes, but Vance gave it a truly unique take on magic. For anyone who has ever struggled with why Dungeons & Dragons’ wizards seem so odd, compared to most fantasy, Jack Vance’s Dying Earth books hold all the answers.